12.5.05

Toa Payoh Lorong 8, a narrow 2-lane road, serves as the border between 2 electoral wards. On the one side is Potong Pasir, under the care of Singapore Democratic Alliance's Chiam See Tong. On the other side is PAP's Bishan-Toa Payoh. The disparity between the 2 neighbourhoods cannot be more glaring. Potong Pasir, with its giant trees (their heavy branches in a sleepy slouch), naked void decks and spontaneous gardens, boasts the best BBQ chicken wings in Singapore (made by our pal, a Jacky Wu lookalike), the coolest Ah Peks in retro trainer suit jackets, and some of the loudest rats. PAP's Toa Payoh has colourful tiled life lobbies and void decks, sapling fruit trees whose growth seemed to have been stunted, and the best-cared-for bunch of stray cats ever (their supermarket catfood delivered daily at 9).

Now that "upgrading" works have started at the Toa Payoh flats, the 2 neighbourhoods finally have 1 thing in common - dust. Indiscriminate, dust from age and dust from hacked-up cement traverse Lorong 8, mingle, mix and even settle.

In the same way, we live on the Toa Payoh side of the road, but cross over almost daily to Mr Chiam's quainter, livelier and seemingly happier ville to have our chicken wings, cheng tng and oldenlandia drink. So like most of our countrymen and, now, dust, we therefore can have our chicken wing and eat it.

Of course, all this political romanticism & posturing is just a prelude to our shameless sales pitch for T-shirts designed by James (click on the photos for a larger image).

Inspired by our favourite BBQ chicken wings at Potong Pasir, "Starry Wings" (model: groucho James) and "Angel Wings" (model: me...with a disturbing balding patch!?!) come in girl, S, M, L and XL sizes. T-shirts are made to order only. $28 including postage ($2). "Sunset Dream" (see 9 May 2005 post below) is also available on an unbleached cotton tote bag. Email us with your order, specifications or queries. Or just email us, ampulets@yahoo.com.sg.

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Sept Update - We've finally made our first batch of T-shirts. Interested to see how they look like? Click here to see "Starry Starry Wings".

Nov Update! - Angel Wings are here! They are not quite the same as in this picture. We done a RGB remix for our 2nd batch of t-shirts. Click here.

We are 2 people who enjoy art, design, books, film, and other people's stories. J runs ampulets design studio (not to be confused with this blog) and Neighbourgoods. Y reads, writes and draws when she's not daydreaming (or at her day job).